LECTURE III
BISHOP BLOUGRAM’S APOLOGY
LECTURE III
BISHOP BLOUGRAM’S APOLOGY
In Bishop Blougram’s Apology we are afforded yet another striking illustration of Browning’s methods of working by means of dramatic machinery. On some occasions we have already found him relying on the arguments of his imaginary soliloquists to support an apparently favourite theory, on others we have noticed him employing these arguments to expose the weak points of a system of which he personally disapproves. More rarely two conflicting theories are placed side by side, the decision as to the author’s own relation to either being left to the judgment of the reader. Thus with the Bishop and the Journalist of the present instance—who may assert with confidence to which side Browning’s sympathies incline? How are we to judge of his actual feelings in the case? Would he hold up to severer opprobrium the representative of honest scepticism or the advocate of opportunism? Does he intend us to accept the scepticism of the Journalist as genuine, the justification of the Bishop as offered in entire good faith? Do his sympathies indeed belong wholly to either side? To hold that he necessarily sets forth a direct expression of his own opinions is to misunderstand the spirit in which he is accustomed to approach his subject. As well believe Caliban to give utterance to his conception of a Supreme Being as the personification of irresponsible and capricious power; and Cleon to estimate his recognition of Christianity as “a doctrine to be held by no sane man.”
This and the two foregoing dramatic poems have been chosen as leading step by step from the earlier and cruder forms of religious belief, to the later and more complex: before approaching the debatable ground of Christmas Eve and Easter Day, and the unquestionably personal expression of feeling in La Saisiaz. A wide gulf seemed indeed, at first sight, to be fixed between Caliban and Cleon, but yet wider is the actually existent distance dividing Cleon from Blougram. Less marked the change in outward circumstances, the inherent difference becomes the more striking. The beauties of Greek art and culture are but replaced by the nineteenth century luxury surrounding a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church. “Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls, and English books ... bound in gold”; the central figures, the Bishop and his companion dallying with the pleasures of the table, discoursing of momentous truths over the wine and olives. Surely the distance between this and Cleon is less to traverse than that between the Greek, surrounded by the proofs of the munificence of Protus, and Caliban revelling in his mire. The superficial difference less, the inherent difference so wide that the idea at first suggested itself of taking as an intermediate and connecting link the poem immediately preceding this in the collected edition of the works, The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church. On more mature consideration it would seem, however, that the prelate of the nineteenth century sufficiently approaches the type of the Renaissance churchman to render the added link unnecessary. All, therefore, that remains for consideration before analyzing the Bishop’s Apology, is a brief survey of the changes effected in the outlook of the civilized world, in so far as they relate to the subject before us, during the eighteen centuries which had elapsed between the letter of Cleon to Protus and the monologue of Blougram addressed to the unfortunate owner of the name of Gigadibs. In the first century of the Christian era in which Cleon wrote, the Greek world had, as we have noticed, come into contact with Christianity only at its extreme edge: to Cleon, student and representative of Greek philosophic thought, its tenets were impossible of credence. The difficulty of faith then was that involved in the acceptance of any formulated theory which should include an assertion of the immortality of the soul and its future state of existence. The difficulties which demand the defence of Blougram are of a character wholly different. Christianity has become the creed of the civilized world: during the intervening centuries the simplicity of the mediaeval faith has given place to the more logical reasoning following the freedom of thought which accompanied the Renaissance; whilst this has, in its turn, been superseded by the more purely critical attitude of mind, resulting in the scepticism, and consequent casuistry, attendant on the dogmatism of the earlier years of the nineteenth century. The Bishop’s definition of his position is sufficiently descriptive of the situation. He is put upon his defence, in truth, solely on account of the peculiar conditions of the environment in which his lot has fallen. Three centuries earlier who would have questioned the genuineness of his faith? Twice as many decades later who would require that his acceptance of the creed he professes should be implicit and detailed? His defence is made merely before the tribunal of his fellow men; the character of this tribunal having changed from the warmth of unquestioning faith to the barren coldness of scepticism, the nature of the attack has likewise changed.
Your picked twelve, you’ll find,
Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
At thus being unable to explain
How a superior man who disbelieves
May not believe as well: that’s Schelling’s way!
It’s through my coming in the tail of time,
Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
Had I been born three hundred years ago
They’d say, “What’s strange? Blougram of course believes;”
And, seventy years since, “disbelieves of course.”
But now, “He may believe; and yet, and yet
How can he?” All eyes turn with interest. (ll. 407-418.)
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I, the man of sense and learning too,
The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
I, to believe at this late time of day!
Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt. (ll. 428-431.)
In short, the Bishop’s is a figure claiming the interest of his contemporaries in that his position is one not readily definable: he may be a saint and a whole-hearted churchman; it is yet more probable, so says the world, that his conventional orthodoxy may be but the cloak of an underlying scepticism.
The identity of Bishop Blougram with Cardinal Wiseman was, as every one knows, established from the first. That this should have been so was inevitable from the various external indications introduced with obvious intention into the poem; to the unprejudiced student it does not, however, appear equally inevitable that the character sketch thus outlined should be commonly estimated as conceived in a spirit hostile to the original. Yet such would seem to be the case. In his Browning Cyclopaedia, Dr. Berdoe quotes from a review contributed to The Rambler of January, 1856, “which,” he adds, “is credibly supposed to have been written by the Cardinal himself.” This article referred to the Bishop’s portrait as “that of an arch-hypocrite and the frankest of fools.” Apparently accepting this criticism, the author of the Cyclopaedia not unnaturally observes that “it is necessary to say that the description is to the last degree untrue, as must have been obvious to any one personally acquainted with the Cardinal.” A similar opinion is expressed by no less an authority than Mr. Wilfrid Ward, who characterizes the portrait as “quite unlike all that Wiseman’s letters and the recollections of his friends show him to have been. Subtle and true as the sketch is in itself, it really depicts someone else.”[52] Is this so? May it not rather be the case that the true character of Browning’s prelate has not been fairly estimated? Does the Bishop occupy the position assigned him by Mr. Ward when he continues, “Blougram acquiesces in the judgment that Catholicism and Christianity are doubtful, and yet that they are no more provable as false than as true; that in one mood they seem true, in another false; that either the moods of faith or the moods of doubt may prove to correspond with the truth, and that in this state of things circumstances and external advantage may be allowed to decide his vocation, and to justify him in professing consistently as true, what in his heart of hearts he only regards as possible?”[53] Again, “The sceptical element which had tried Wiseman in his early years was something wholly different from Blougram’s scepticism.”[54] Is there not something more than this to be said for the Bishop’s Apology? It is, indeed, the main difficulty of the poem to decide to what extent the speaker is, or is not, serious in his assertions; but if we come to the conclusion that he is either “an arch-hypocrite,” or “the frankest of fools,” we shall assuredly be very far from having read the defence aright. Browning himself has, according to report, had something to say on this subject.[55] When accused by Sir Charles Gavin Duffy and Mr. John Forster of abhorrence of the Roman Catholic faith on the grounds of the then recent publication of this poem, containing, as was alleged, a portrait of a sophistical and self-indulgent priest, intended as a satire on Cardinal Wiseman, Browning met the charge with what would appear to have been genuine astonishment; and, whilst admitting his intention of employing the Cardinal as a model, concluded, “But I do not consider it a satire, there is nothing hostile about it.” And, looked at more closely, it is questionable whether much of the alleged hostility is to be detected. At least our feelings towards the Bishop contain no element of either aversion or contempt as we conclude our study of his defence!
The external indications of identity are scattered, as if incidentally, throughout the poem, according to the method habitual to Browning. (1) Cardinal in 1850, Wiseman had been already consecrated bishop in 1840, and sent to England as Vicar Apostolic of the Central District in conjunction with Bishop Walsh. The year of his appointment as Cardinal was also the date of the papal bull assigning territorial titles to Roman Catholic bishops in England, a measure, rightly or wrongly, attributed popularly to the influence of Wiseman. His episcopal title from 1840 had been that of “Melipotamus in partibus infidelium,” hence